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Transcript of Impact of Blogs on Students Writing Abilities in EFL Classrooms
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IMPACT OF BLOGS ON STUDENTS WRITING ABILITIES IN LANGUAGE
TEACHING EFL CLASSROOMS
LUISA FERNANDA COBOS DUQUE
UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE COLOMBIA
FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS HUMANAS
DEPARTAMENTO DE LENGUAS EXTRANJERAS
BOGOT, 2012
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IMPACT OF BLOGS ON STUDENTS WRITING ABILITIES IN LANGUAGE
TEACHING EFL CLASSROOMS
LUISA FERNANDA COBOS DUQUE
Code: 861046
Literature Review to apply for a Bachelors degree in English Philology
CLAUDIA LUCA ORDOEZ ORDOEZ
Advisor
UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE COLOMBIA
FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS HUMANAS
DEPARTAMENTO DE LENGUAS EXTRANJERAS
BOGOT, 2012
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TABLE OF CONTENT
IMPACT OF BLOGS ON STUDENTS WRITING ABILITIES IN LANGUAGE TEACHING EFL
CLASSROOMS .......................................................................................................................... 4
Context ................................................................................................................................ 4
Communication and language learning .............................................................................. 6
Authenticity in language teaching: Web 2.0 applications .................................................. 7
Using blogs for authentic communicative writing: some benefits ..................................... 9
Learning communities and collaborative work ................................................................ 13
Peers correction in the writing process ............................................................................. 17
Other benefits and some disadvantages of blogging ........................................................ 20
How to implement blogs in EFL classrooms .................................................................... 22
Conclusions ....................................................................................................................... 23
References ......................................................................................................................... 26
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IMPACT OF BLOGS ON STUDENTS WRITING ABILITIES IN LANGUAGE TEACHING EFL
CLASSROOMS
Context
Teaching English to non-English speaking students is very challenging, especially
in contexts like ours where the language being learned is not used in the society at large.
Usually, teachers limit their classes and the abilities of the learners to drill activities
focused just on one formal aspect of the language, or activities that place students in
simulated situations different from the ordinary practices of their culture. These frame
learners use of the language with no space for reflection about language form or how it can
be used to solve real problems (Brown, Collins and Duguid, 1989), making teaching and
learning a language an educational activity that is separated from the use of the language in
society. Fortunately in the last decades, technology has opened new opportunities for the
presentation of language to students and for the students to approach the language and its
practice, using the Internet, although there is not too much research that investigates how it
can be used pedagogically to develop language skills.
From my experience as language student, I have realized that, language classes can
become a repetition of nonsense words to many students because of two main reasons: a
large number of students per class and teachers lack of interest in using technology. Due to
the fact that teachers have classes with a large number of students, at least 32 according to
decree 3020 of the Ministerio de Educacin Nacional (2002), they usually have to deal with
different levels of knowledge in the same group, so it is hard to follow students progress in
the language. Another consequence of big classes is that teachers adopt the filling in
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grammar exercises as the best option for keeping so many students working, exercises that
are apart from any real application of the content studied during classes. On the other hand,
despite of the increasing use of the Internet in every aspect of students lives and the
growing concern in educational institutions for investing in information and
communication technologies (ICTs, from now on), specifically in computers, some teachers
are still not interested in looking for new, authentic ways to help students approach
language learning through online means. But online scenarios allow authentic
conversations and correspondence with native and non-native speakers in varied
communicative situations, so they can help students develop their communicative abilities,
influencing not only their performance in English but their attitudes and opinions towards
learning a foreign language. Blogs, for example, can do this through the development of
their writing abilities.
In this literature review I support this personal thesis, by reviewing theory and
research studies carried out in EFL contexts in which blogs have been implemented as part
of the students authentic use of the language in writing courses. First, I will refer to the
relation between communication and language learning, highlighting the importance of
authenticity in language education settings. Then, I will introduce Web 2.0 applications and
some of their benefits to describe how in a monolingual context like ours, they allow EFL
students to use the new language in real communication. After this, I will present the
definition of writing as a communicative ability and connect it to the definition of blogs,
exploring how they allow for authentic communicative writing. In doing this, I will
describe how blogs have been implemented in education and how their characteristics, like
asynchrony, are related to their benefits in language learning and teaching. Then, I will
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develop the concept of audience, basic to the communicative definition of writing, and how
students writing is affected by the sense of belonging to a writing community and
negotiating meaning, here I will also introduce collaborative writing and peer corrective
interactions from a constructivist perspective to describe more widely the possibilities that
blogs open for learners to improve their writing skills. I will then refer to other advantages
of the use of blogs in EFL classes, like the development of autonomy, and the improvement
of reading abilities. I will present positions against blogging as an effective way to develop
language abilities in EFL classes, providing a different view of them as language learning
tool through possible limitations and possible negative effects on the students learning
process according to some research studies. Finally, from them and their advantages, I will
draw some recommendations to implement blogs in EFL education settings based on some
research studies results that show what is important to consider.
Communication and language learning
When people speak in their mother tongue (L1), they do not only use an abstract
system of language composed by letters and sounds, words, and sentences. With that
system people actually express meaning, because they are always communicating with a
purpose in mind: describing something to someone, giving directions, apologizing,
discussing a point, persuading someone, asking for information and so on. Widdowson
(1978) points out that someone who is learning a language has to learn to do both and
makes the difference between usage and use. According to him, the first one refers to the
ability to compose correct sentences whereas language use refers to the speakers
understanding of context and their ability to choose the appropriate language in a real-life
situation.
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People who are learning a foreign language need to learn both the usage and the use
of language in communication. It is difficult, though, to provide students with authentic
opportunities for language use outside formal education environments. On one hand, there
may not be a real need for students to use the new language in daily communication, so
they may not be interested at all in learning another language. On the other hand, what
motivates and encourages the learning of a new language is social need and the pragmatic
demands of contextualized communication (Ninio & Snow, 1996 cited in Ordoez, 2011).
So, providing students with activities related to their contexts and interests can help them to
understand communicative phenomena or events they are familiar with. It can also help to
allow students to participate in decision-making about what to learn, what to do to learn,
and how to do it, in using the foreign language (Ordoez, 2011). This is supported by
Bransford, Vye, Kinzer and Risko (1990) and Littlewood (2000), who define authentic
communication as using language to communicate in situations where students themselves
have to solve a problem.
Authenticity in language teaching: Web 2.0 applications
Ideally an authentic language class should be taught in real-life locations and use
real-life practice. But as this is quite difficult in a monolingual context like ours, the
benefits of authentic interaction can be obtained nowadays in Web-based learning
environments. On-line applications give students access to communities of readers and
writers, where students use the foreign language in real communicative contexts and for
real communication purposes. These tools have been called Web 2.0, and according to
Reeves, Herrington and Oliver (2002), there are many advantages in using them to learn
and teach a foreign language. Students can, for example, collaborate with each other
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(Lebow & Wager, 1994), reflect on their self-learning (Young, 1993; Myers, 1993; Gordon,
1998), play different roles in communication (Bransford, Sherwood, Hasselbring, Kinzer &
Williams, 1990), polish products (Gordon, 1998; Barab, Squire, & Dueber, 2000), and have
access to multiple interpretations and outcomes of work(Duchastel, 1997).
Electronic interaction is defined as a threefold competence of communication,
construction and research (Shetzer &Warschauer, 2000). As Web 2.0-based applications
allow conversations, participation, and sharing in a social group, including them in
language teaching can lead teachers to two exploratory ways to use them. On one hand,
Calongne (2002) indicates that including Web 2.0 in teaching allows users not only to
search for information but to create new content; he also indicates that online group
interactions encourage those students who are not willing to talk in a traditional class to
contribute online. On the other hand, Hammond (2000) argues that e-learning settings offer
varied opportunities for informal and social sharing and they enable teachers and learners to
continually do reflective practice.
These characteristics of Web 2.0 tools make them ideal for communicative practice
of a language. In writing, for example, they allow for authentic writing with a purpose and
an audience in mind, a process that Widdowson (1978) has termed the actual writing
ability. According to this author, when someone is writing a text, he/she is not just
producing a sequence of sentences; instead, he/she is using those sentences to create
discourse, arranging different arguments to persuade the reader that he/she is offering
something worthy of reading. Writing with a purpose also implies a relation between writer
and reader from the beginning, since what is written depends on how the writer thinks that
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the text will be understood and interpreted by the reader. This is writing as ability, as
opposed to simply composing or arranging a set of related sentences (Widdowson, 1978).
Richards (1990) specifies this more saying that a written text is the product of a series of
complicated mental operations that require not only syntactic and lexical knowledge, but
also the capacity to create and organize ideas and thoughts in a way that can be effectively
conveyed to a potential reader. In this context, grammar and formal aspects of the language
should been considered important for creating a text but not the only features when
constructing meaning (Mitchell, 1996).
Using blogs for authentic communicative writing: some benefits
Many researchers have found blogs appropriate to implement in language teaching
and learning, especially in the teaching and learning of writing (Lantolf, 2000; Calongme,
2002; Lave & Wenger, 2005; Stephens & Collins, 2007; Dippold, 2009; Lee, 2009; Raith,
2006). Blogs have been defined as websites whose content is organized chronologically
from the most recent entry backwards and which are updated constantly, allowing readers
and writers to communicate to each other by leaving comments or suggestions on content,
expressing ones thoughts, or discussing ideas. Blood (2002) differentiates between two
types of blogs. The first one is journals, which function as electronic diaries in which
bloggers can share their thoughts and opinions, and the second one is the filter-style blog,
where users post links to other web content with commentary.
A more pedagogical classification of blogs is given by Campbell (2003, cited in
Nadzrah, 2009). His first type is called Tutor blog, in which the tutor creates and monitors a
blog to provide, for example, daily reading practice for students. It can include English web
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sites for students to explore, links for self-study, assigned tasks or course information. The
second type is called Learner blogs. These are student-run blogs, created either individually
or in a small collaborative group. The blog can function as a platform to express students
ideas through free writing or as a forum in which students can discuss their writing. The
third type is the Class blog, run by the entire class. It can be used as a discussion platform
for project-based language learning or as a free bulletin board where students can post any
information for others to read. It can also serve as a space for an international classroom
language exchange. Richardson (2006), in turn, analyzes blogging from a more general,
pedagogical perspective. According to him, blogs can be created depending on the purposes
that teachers or students could have in terms of class arrangement. For example, blogs can
function as class portals, as online filling cabinets, as e-portfolios, as collaborative spaces,
for knowledge management and articulation of the class, or as school websites.
When focusing on the improvement of writing abilities, researchers have found
many advantages of using blogs. According to Godwin-Jones (2006), writing on blogs
provides an environment in which students can develop skills of persuasion and
argumentation; offers opportunities for collaborative learning; encourages feedback and
allows both writing and reading activity; and stimulates debate, critical analysis and the
articulation of ideas and opinions. Other authors also support the use of blogs by saying
that they encourage critical thinking and respect towards the points of view of others, that
having an audience increases students language awareness and reflective writing, and that
blogs make it easier for teachers to track students performance (Bartlett-Bragg, 2003;
Dieu, 2004; Nardi, 2004; Miers, 2004; Ward, 2004; Huffaker, 2005; Richardson, 2005;
Raith, 2006; Blackstone, 2007; Quintero, 2008; Chu, 2009).
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In contrast, Wrede (2003) argued against blogging as a means of writing
improvement. In his opinion, technological communication advances such as instant
messaging and mobile phone texts are having a negative effect on literacy. It is also
supported by Hammersly (2003) who have found students use phrases like BTW (by the
way), cuz (because), and U (you) in submitted written work. Hammersly also mentioned in
his article the case of a student in Scotland who wrote her entire essay in mobile phone
texts expressions.
Besides all the advantages mentioned, blogs allow students to have asynchronous
interactions. That is to say, learners can write and publish their thoughts and opinions
without time or space constraints, thus placing critical thinking about the content over
posting work online (Oravec, 2003; Ducate & Lomicka, 2005; Richardson, 2005; Godwin-
Jones, 2006). In relation to this, Vurdien (2011) carried out a research during five months
with 11 EFL students in Spain who were preparing for the Certificate in Advance English
examination (CAE). Her study revealed that 7 of the students found the asynchronous
nature of blogs an asset. It allowed them to reread their own and their peers postings
without any space or time constraints, which provided them with the opportunity to reflect
not only on the content, but on new grammatical structures and new vocabulary. Sotillo
(2000) found the exact same results after qualitatively analyzing data collected from a study
with 25 adult students with different language backgrounds, in the US. In other words, in
the medium of asynchronous writing, the reflective aspect of composing can merge with the
interactive aspect of idea sharing in writing (Widdowson, 1978).
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Even if bloggers dont have an immediate answer from readers, they are writing
with a purpose and with an audience in mind (Hyland, 2002), meaning that blogging is a
process of sharing and negotiating meaning in which, if there is no audience, there will be
no reason to write a text. Having a real audience is what makes this kind of interaction
authentic for EFL students (Hedge, 2000). Traditionally, what students write does not mean
much to them, as it is not addressed to anyone else but the teacher. Choi (2008) indicates
that it is crucial for the students learning process that they are aware of the audience, but if
readers are only their teacher and peers and interaction purposes are only dictated by the
teacher, students writing will be shaped only by what teachers expect them to write.
However, when writing on a blog, the online audience is not only anticipated but
expected, and thus influences and structures the very manner in which the writer articulates,
composes, and distributes the self-document (Kitzmann, 2003). Similarly, Grabe and
Kaplan (1996) point out that the audience is essential to the generation of meaning.
According to them, the number of people expected to read the text, the extent to which the
readers are known or unknown, and differences of status, shared background knowledge,
and shared knowledge of the topic at hand in the audience influence the writer and his
writing.
The importance of audience in writing development is supported by several research
studies. Ward (2004) for example, introduced blogging as part of a L2 writing class for
non-native English speakers. After interviewing 40 students from the class, he concluded
that they were excited about writing again because the whole world was reading their words
and not just their writing teacher; this encouraged them to not only think about what they
said but also about how they said it. According to a survey, approximately two thirds of the
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class preferred writing on the blog to the more traditional written journal, and thirty three
(33) students told somebody else about their blogs; they really wanted to get people to read
what they had to say. Vurdien (2011) also found that 8 out 11 EFL students of hers had
benefited from blogs since, as they said, they had to think thoroughly about their own
views, concerning the issues before planning their task, choosing carefully the vocabulary
and grammatical structures they were going to use, deciding which the appropriate register
for each task was, and checking for spelling errors before posting their work.
Comparable results were obtained by Raith (2006), who had in a comparative study
carried out with 29 students of 9th grade, who studied English as a foreign language, in a
secondary girls school in Germany, part of his students writing a journal on a blog and the
others writing a journal on paper and contrasted both writing processes qualitatively. He
found out that 80% of the blog writers saw an influence of the audience on their writing,
but only 33, 3% of the paper journal writers did. Based on Littlewoods concept of
authentic communication (Littlewood, 2000), Raith concluded that students who worked
with paper journals wrote mostly summaries and reproduced content because they did not
try to negotiate meaning, whereas those who wrote online were actually constructing
meaning and interacting with their audience.
Learning communities and collaborative work
Because of the reader-writer interaction, Lave and Wenger (1991) suggest that
having students use blogs is like having a community of practice (CoP), since what is
important is what students learn as a result of the interaction, what they do together, rather
than the final product. Besides, learners position themselves and their ideas within a social
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group, which contributes to establish their identity through discourse and facilitates the
writing process (Scarcella & Oxford, 1992). They establish roles within the group, learn
from each other, and construct knowledge.
The word community comes from the words communicate and common,
indicating groups of people who share experiences and interests and who learn about their
interests (Mercer, 2003). According to Wenger (1998), some of the advantages that a CoP
offers are that students can evolve gradually because of their common interest in a
particular area, and that they also retain knowledge in a living way, since tasks respond to
local circumstances. In this way, students initiate themselves into real practice. Wenger
(1998) also states that when students work within a group, they start making things happen
for the whole community. In doing this, they work collaboratively: they distribute
responsibilities, discuss new ideas, and solve problems together. They also give feedback to
each other to achieve a specific goal and, as members of the community have a shared
understanding, they know what is relevant to communicate and how to present the
information in useful ways.
Several research studies based on a constructivist view of learning indicate that
learning communities are helpful to learners in sharing and constructing knowledge via
online interactions (Eldred, 1991; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Haneda, 1997; Feng, Lianghuan&
Long, 2000; Hyland, 2002; Downes, 2004; Nardi, 2004; Alm, 2006; Raith, 2006;
Blackstone, 2007; Mason &Rennie, 2007; Stephens & Collins, 2007; Lee, 2010). From the
Vygotskys socio-constructivist theory (1978), Fernndez (2012) argues that when learners
construct knowledge in collaboration with more capable individuals (experts), language
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becomes the semiotic tool that mediates learning. Given that students do not have the same
strengths or weaknesses, they can provide assistance to each other at different levels when
they work together, achieving a performance that is beyond their individual level of
competence (Ohta, 2001). According to Jones and Brader-Araje (2002), learning is the
process by which students construct meaning from past experiences in a social context. In a
classroom environment, students create their own meanings and develop ideas through
interaction with peers and teachers. The whole process of learning thus encourages students
to use language and new knowledge in different situations, including using language to
express themselves, to explain, to negotiate, and to compromise with peers while discussing
ideas.
According to Swain (2000, 2001), when learners share the responsibility for a
written product, they tend to collaborate in the solution of their language problems by
formulating and testing hypothesis, offering and assessing new input, or correcting
themselves or others. As a result, students develop cognitive tools to reflect on the foreign
language, discuss the language they are using in situations where they are focused on
meaning rather than form, and to solve problems related to its use. In addition, in blogs
students assume multiple roles in the writing process since when blogging they act as
writers who write and post, as readers and reviewers who respond to other writers posts
and as writer-readers who react to criticism of their own posts (Pinkman, 2005). When
using blogs, students publish their draft texts and receive comments from peers almost
instantly so they can collect the suggestions received, and organize them into a more
meaningful and well-structured new text (Fernndez, 2012).
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In recent years, a number of studies have drawn the attention of teachers to the
benefits of collaborative writing tasks, which require students to work in pairs throughout
the entire writing process (Storch, 2005; Storch & Wigglesworth, 2007; Wigglesworth &
Storch, 2009). Writing tasks completed in pairs offer learners an opportunity to collaborate
in the solution of their language-related problems, co-construct new language knowledge,
and produce linguistically more accurate written texts (Fernndez, 2012). Collaborative
dialogue is defined as the dialogue that occurs between students as they collaborate to solve
linguistic problems mediating L2 learning (Kim, 2008; Lapkin, Swain, & Smith, 2002;
Storch, 2002; Swain, Brooks, & Tocalli-Beller, 2002; Swain & Lapkin, 1998, 2002). In a
research study carried out in an Australian university, which included 23 students from
different origins (mostly Asians), Storch (2005) compared texts produced by individuals
and students working in pairs. She planned students writing process in three stages:
planning, writing and revision. According to her, the planning phase was spent on
generating preliminary ideas, reading, clarifying instructions, and deciding who would be
the scribe. And for the second stage, students spent some time on language deliberations
related to grammatical accuracy by offering alternative suggestions, feedback or
completing each others ideas.
Research into collaborative writing indicates that collaboration contributes to
increased complexity in students writing (Sotillo, 2000), produces higher quality ofwriting
(Storch, 2005) and can also be a source of student motivation (Kowal & Swain, 1994). In
her previous research, Storch (2005) found that students who worked in pairs wrote more
complex sentences than those who decided to work individually; besides, their texts tended
to be shorter but more accurate grammatically, and included clear highlighting statements
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in contrast to the ones wrote by individuals. Similar results were obtained by Ware (2004),
who carried out a study in a public university in the United States with 14 first year
students enrolled in a writing program. According to her, students who participate in web-
based writing reflect their comfort with technology, writing about past experiences,
interacting and receiving comments from their peers, and working together to achieve one
common goal. From the qualitative analysis of the data, Ware found out that some of the
students saw writing as a kind of debate with their peers, which influenced their writing
although students did not find a direct relation between what they wrote on-line and what
they handed in on paper.
Peers correction in the writing process
Nevertheless, not all research produces positive results when exploring the use of
blogs in writing development. Results from research studies on the effectiveness of peer
feedback on students writing vary notably, although some teachers have found students
feedback valuable in their language classes (Keh, 1990; Rothschild &Klingenberg, 1990;
Tsui& Ng, 2000). According to Dippold (2009), through blogging interaction students can
take advantage of having a different perspective on their performance and compare their
tasks to their peers. Also, Ware (2004) found that for some of her students, writing was a
space for sharing ideas with her peers in collaboration, but they felt they were competing,
since when they made their texts public, they became subject to criticism and evaluation.
Caulk (1994) highlighted a relative effectiveness of peer feedback when comparing her
comments as a writing teacher and those given by her students with an intermediate or
advanced level of English. She found that students comments tended to be more specific
and focused on grammar, whereas her suggestions were more general and took into
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consideration the whole text. Kamimura (2006) said that getting comments in depth
depends on students proficiency. According to her, highly proficient students tend to make
global and discourse-level comments, whereas the low-proficient students tended to
provide specific sentential comments and local revisions. Tsui and Ng (2000) add that
although teachers comments were more detailed than peer comments, the latter foster the
sense of an authentic audience contributing to raise students awareness of both strengths
and weaknesses in their own compositions.
Ideally, students feedback should contribute to the construction of a new revised
text; but instead, Mendona and Johnson (1994) pointed out that their advanced students
included peers suggestions selectively according to what they considered valid or not. This
is explained by Nelson and Murphy (1993) in terms of collaborative or defensive
interaction among students. According to them, when students work in a collaborative way
and have a good relationship, they are more likely to use their peers suggestions; but when
they do not interact at all or have a bad relationship, they are less likely to include
suggestions in their revisions. On the other hand, students may accept feedback from native
speakers more readily. Chen and Brown (2011) carried out a study in a university in the
U.S where students, received feedback from native speakers of the language. They found
that students had a positive reaction since they felt treated the same as any other speaker of
English. The students through that those comments encouraged them to be more reflective
on their errors so they would not repeat them in new tasks. Other studies, however, indicate
that students prefer teachers feedback to peers feedback (Zhang, 1995; Nelson & Carson,
1998), and that they are more likely to accept the suggestions made by the teacher than
those made by peers (Connor &Asenavage, 1994; Nelson & Carson, 1998). Connor and
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Asenavage (1994) explained that one of the reasons for their students reluctance to include
peers comments in their revisions was a lack of experience in peer review. This is also
supported by Leki (1990) when referring to the potential problems inherits in peer
responses.
In Colombia and other countries, teacher and native speaker feedback has also
proven more effective. Quintero (2008) also carried out a research study in Bogot with
two groups of students: one group of 17 students between 17 and 23 years of age who were
studying Licenciatura en Educacin Bsica Primaria - Ingls at Universidad Distrital
Francisco Jos de Caldas and a group of Canadian students with similar characteristics.
From the qualitative analysis of the data she concluded that feedback from Canadian peers
and from her as teachercontributed to the improvement of Colombian students texts
during the intervention. The impact that this feedback had on students was mainly
motivational since EFL students felt good when they were understood by native speakers of
English. This increased their commitment to language learning.
Similar results were obtained by Blackstone and Harwood (2007) who used blogs
with a group of 120 students from China, Korea, Thailand and Vietnam, between 18 and 22
years of age in Singapore. During a year, each student had to post seven comments on their
blogs of at least 250 words. Students worked with a peer so they could revise their texts and
publish the final version. They also attended to training sessions on text revision in which
they were asked to identify and correct grammar mistakes, general organization and
cohesion of the text. The quantitative analysis of the data showed that during the first
semester, 75% of students said they had improved their communicative writing abilities
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through blogging. The percentage rose to 89.3% during the second period. Most of the
students (95.3% of students in the first semester and 96.4% in the second) attributed this
improvement to peers feedback.
On the other hand, students may feel embarrassed correcting others mistakes or
being critical of their work, since they do not know what mistakes to correct (Vurdien,
2001). A similar finding was reported in Wus study (2005), in which students did not post
any views on their peers work because of their lack of confidence; therefore, the blogs
were not interactive. Wu argued that students might not have known what points to
consider or they did not feel qualified enough to manage error correction. Keh (1990)
recommendspeers feedback in language classes but argues that the effectiveness of this
interaction depends largely on a proper preliminary training. According to Vurdien (2001),
it is crucial to teach students how to manage editing so that they are aware of what kind of
errors they are looking for when they read their peers text. Berg (1999) supports this idea
by saying that, after training her students, they were able to make a greater number of
meaningful revisions which improved the quality of learners final texts as opposed to the
superficial ones provided at the beginning of the course.
Other benefits and some disadvantages of blogging
Apart from making students more independent and committed to their learning
process, blogs can produce learning beyond the course. Some students have expressed their
desire to continue blogging after a specific intervention (Ward, 2004; Blackstone, 2007).
Research has shown that there is also a relation (although non-reciprocal) between writing
and reading. Given that blogs have a complex multimodal setting in which readers can
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write comments or react by posting responses, students can adopt different roles: being
readers or becoming authors also which is connected to having an audience (Raith, 2006).
This is also supported by Downes (2004), who says that blogging isnt really about writing
at all, writing is just the end point of the process. According to the author, blogging is about
first, reading but even more important, it is about reading what is of interest to students:
their culture, their community or their ideas. So if students are engaged with the content,
they automatically start reacting by reflecting, criticizing, and questioning. Ware (2004)
carried out a research study in which he surveyed 40 non-native English speakers of high-
intermediate to advanced level from different backgrounds. From the quantitative analysis
of data, he concluded that writing blogs helped students to read blogs and vice versa since
through writing, the writer becomes more aware of the audience and through reading, he or
she becomes more familiar with the corresponding idea of purpose. Zaini (2011) also found
that the blogging process encouraged the students to write more freely since they were
focused on meaning rather than forms. His study included 80 students from English
Language Studies program and Literature program in Malaysia.
Other studies have shown that Internet access is a motivating factor for reading
extensively (Liaw, Chen, & Huang, 2008; Rodzvilla, 2002; Stiler & Philleo, 2003).
Vurdien (2011) adds that as a result of the interactive nature of blogs, they motivate
students to read another language different from their own since they are reading and
writing about a field of their interest and giving their own opinions. This is supported by
Yang (2009) who worked with 43 EFL student teachers in Taiwan and found that when
students read blogs and commented, they did it in expecting of a little discussion, following
their interests, and combining texts and conversations in a very personal and stimulating
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way. But everything is not positive about using blogs for learning language. On the
contrary, there are some researchers who are in disagreement with the use of blogs to
improve reading skills. Wrede (2003) argues that as blogs authors are not usually
professional writers, blogs readers are not generally professional readers either. According
to him, the reading cannot compensate for the weak writing of authors and it could be
characterized by seeing what one wants to see, also because there is superficial and often
inaccurate understanding of the content.
How to implement blogs in EFL classrooms
So the use of blogs has to be carefully designed. According to Lujan-Mora and
Espinosa (2007), teachers have to take into account the purpose of students online written
interaction and which type of blog allows more effectively for its accomplishment when
implementing blogs in an EFL classroom; they also have to consider what kind of activities
students are going to do, the type of blog (one managed by the teacher or one an individual
one by each student), if there will be individual or group work, and the time and frequency
of the interaction.
In Blackstones opinion (2007), it is important to establish what kind of interaction
students are going to have and with which purpose. He, for example, had a group of 145
university students of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) in a rural area of Japan, who
worked in parallel cycles of blogging. In first place, each student had to have a blog and
they had to distribute the blog address to all other classmates. Second, students worked
with a blogging buddy, who was a classmate who would read the students blog post
before it was posted. After this, cyclical posting started; every student made at least one
post on a specific topic on his or her blog every two weeks. They were required to read and
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respond to at least three posts made by classmates during each biweekly cycle. In
Blackstones opinion, students need a step by step guidance to achieve class goals, which is
why a careful planning is essential when implementing blogging.
Another way to implement blogs is actually getting real conversations with native
speakers of the language, which is a great opportunity for those students who do not have
the possibility to practice with someone what they are learning in school, especially in
monolingual contexts like ours. This is the case ofQuinteros study (2008), in which her
students had three spaces to interact in: a personal blog, a group blog, and a discussion
blog. In this study, students had a partner too but, instead of an EFL partner, they had
native speakers of the language. Additional to get to know each other, students from
Colombia received feedback from Canadian students related to grammar accuracy,
coherence and also they got encouraging comments to keep studying and improving their
language performance.
Conclusions
From the revision of several research studies, it can be said that blogs contribute to
the improvement of students writing abilities in the foreign language, since they promote a
reflective practice of the language being learned. Such improvement starts with students
being aware of the fact that they are no longer writing for the teacher but for their
classmates and anyone with a connection to the Internet. And when students write thinking
about their readers, they take into account different considerations to assure that the
message will be understood. Aspects like the coherence and cohesion of the text, for
example, take more value and students get into a cyclical process of making a careful
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choice of vocabulary and grammatical structures, organizing ideas, considering the
appropriate register for expressing themselves effectively, checking for spelling errors
before posting their texts, correcting and re-writing ideas, etc. Given that this is a
complicated operation even for native speakers of a language, some teachers have
introduced collaborative work in writing classes for students to help each other when
constructing paragraphs, while they are using and practicing the foreign language to
communicate among them during the writing process.
Although this collaborative writing can be done on paper, in a conventional English
class, through blogs students not only can post their texts for everybody to read them, but
they can also receive feedback from their readers so they can improve the texts and re-write
more accurate and effective pieces; this is what makes blogging interesting and enriching
blogging for students. On the other hand, having students correcting their peers texts is not
simple because students need to know what they are looking for when they have to correct
others. That is why some researchers recommend or to train them in doing this. Depending
on the writing feature that teachers want to improve, students will look for grammar issues,
spelling, wrong expressions, wrong words, wordiness, use of connectors, etc. They can also
use specific guidelines to provide feedback as expected.
These two important processes (collaboration and peer correction) are possible
because of the use of blogs when developing writing abilities in the foreign language. But
there are two more benefits that emerge from blogging in EFL classrooms. One of them is
the cultural interchange to which students are exposed. At the beginning of the interaction,
students certainly will visit their classmates blogs and comment just on them, but if they
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are engaged enough, they will start visiting blogs related to their own interests, for example
in music, movies, actors, etc. This will provide practice in reading and interacting with
native and non-native English speakers, using the foreign language authentically and with a
real purpose. On the other hand, students motivation on learning a new language will not
be a problem after this on-line interaction, since they will be writing about their interests,
they will be using the language for expressing their ideas and thoughts, they will be
meeting new people and communicating with the whole Internet community.
Finally, when planning to implement blogs or any other Web 2.0 tool in language
classes, it is crucial to have a very specific objective to achieve. There are plenty of
possibilities to work on with blogs, and as a consequence, plenty of decisions to make
before implementing them: what students are going to write about, how they are going to
interact, interaction in groups or individual work, which will be the frequency of the
interaction, which kind of blogs is going to be used, who will be the manager, if students
are going to work on just writing or also on reading or speaking. By having a detailed plan,
the whole blogging experience will make students and teachers learn a lot from each other,
while students improve their performance in the language through real communication.
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